Thread by @dgurdasani1

Very glad to see @bmj_latest correct their previous piece to highlight the problems with the Hoeg preprint on vaccine myocarditis. The methods of the study- using vaccine adverse event reporting data in the way they have make the results invalid.

bmj.com/content/374/bm…

All global data suggest vaccine associated myocarditis is a rare and typically mild side effect of vaccines in adolescents, and benefits from vaccines *far* outweigh risks even at much lower incidence rates than we have currently in the UK.

Lot's of data now to suggest myocarditis is strongly associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and recent work also suggesting COVID-19 related myocarditis is far more common than vaccine associated myocarditis (in 16+ adults at least).

Here's a CDC study showing 37x increased risk of myocarditis in hospital patients with COVID-19 compared to uninfected controls in under 16s.

It is important to discuss the risks of vaccine myocarditis in adolescents- a typically mild and rare (30-40/million incidence) side effect, but *not* without discussion of the much greater risk from SARS-CoV-2 infection - for hospitalisations, death, myocarditis and long COVID.

The choice isn't between vaccination, and no exposure, unfortunately - at least not in the UK. At current UK incidence in adolescents, the choice is between vaccination and infection. And infection posed *much* higher risks.

Those who are worried about rare mild effects from vaccines should worry about the very concerning impacts of a novel virus- shown to cause long term brain changes even with mild infection in young adults, and long-term symptoms lasting >1 yr in 11,000 children post-COVID.

Not to mention the ~4,500 hospitalisations with COVID-19 in 6-17 yr olds since the beginning of the pandemic, and the entirely preventable deaths.